Imagining the Past Through the Present: Questioning Notions of Sameness and Difference Through the Virtual and the Actual

BRYN HARRISON

University of Huddersfield

Introduction

Many of the compositions I wrote between 2000 and 2018 utilise discrete patterns in which near and exact repetition operate in proximity. For the listener this calls into question notions of sameness and difference. David Hume’s dictum, as paraphrased by Gilles Deleuze, that “repetition changes nothing in the object repeated, but does change something in the mind which contemplates it” ¹ became a defining aesthetic statement for me during the process of writing in this period. It illustrates how duration might be experienced as a state of perpetual “becoming,” through which each moment is perceived as being distinct from that which precedes it. My experiments with this approach to musical perception prompted me to take an active interest in thresholds, boundaries, and states of ambiguity.

Over the past three years, I have begun to work more directly with technology, experimenting with combinations of pre-recorded and live sound. The shifting relationship between digital and live loops has offered a different perspective to my work; the mechanical reproduction of the loop through digital means makes explicit that each repetition is a carbon copy of what directly preceded it. Working with recorded sound within a live instrumental context has problematised my previously held notions of perpetually “becoming” by questioning what constitutes sameness. In contrast to Deleuze, I am drawn to what Lisa Baraitser has described as a suspended time, “no longer a line with direction or purpose.” ²

In her excellent book Enduring Time, Baraitser states:

Below, I will discuss what I see as different temporalities at play in my piece Dead Time (2019). I will consider aspects of the virtual and the actual as well as asking what it means to listen to events in which time seems suspended. I will suggest that combining live and recorded sound within a highly repetitive context might offer the possibility of a multi-dimensional perspective of time. The temporal aspects of the piece that are considered below are probably best appreciated by listening to the piece in its entirety. Time stamps have been provided for the examples discussed.

Dead Time

Dead Time is a twenty-one-minute composition for alto flute, tenor saxophone, violin, piano, percussion, and live electronics, composed between 2018 and 2019. It was written and first performed by the excellent Wet Ink ensemble, with whom I have collaborated previously. The commission was made possible thanks to the generous support of the University of Huddersfield’s Research Fund (URF), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and the Canada Council for the Arts. The piece can be seen as an extension of ideas explored in many of my earlier works: the material is largely homogenous across the instrumental parts, utilising closely voiced harmonic material within a confined pitch range; the rhythmic language involves “framing” events using tuplet figures; and the dynamic level is soft throughout. However, Dead Time includes some uncharacteristic features, which were in part brought about through having the opportunity to try out ideas within a workshop context with the ensemble in New York in 2018. These uncharacteristic features include: (i) the music being written in a relatively low frequency range, which tends to muddy the texture and makes distinctions between instrumental parts difficult to discern; (ii) the cyclical material being cut up and reassembled into a mosaic-like structure, which has the effect of disrupting a sense of harmonic motion; and (iii) the piece featuring live electronics in which short samples of the instrumental parts heard during the performance are played back under the live materials. Each of these elements was included with the intention of disorienting the listener.

The ways in which sampled materials are performed against the live materials can be heard in the first two minutes of the piece.

Video example 1. Bryn Harrison, Dead Time (2019), performed by Wet Ink Ensemble, recorded at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November 2019. Video playback starts at 0:00.

Example 1. Bryn Harrison, Dead Time, bars 1–4.

As should be evident from the above example, the materials are presented in such a way as to appear fleeting and ephemeral. Events slip by quickly and it soon becomes difficult to discern what is being repeated. The sense of confusion is mirrored in the treatment of the improvised electronic part and live instrumental materials: each digitally captured sound is played back irregularly and erratically in real time with the instruction that the peak of each sound should occur at the end of the sample. This instruction is echoed in the instrumental parts for flute, saxophone, and violin, with instructions to exaggerate crescendo attacks on specified pitches. The intended effect is to create a juxtaposition of materials that sound as if they are being played backwards (rather like a piano recording played in reverse) as well as forwards.

In bar 51, the first significant textural change in the work takes place in which a live instrumental loop (performed eleven times) is replaced by a sampled loop of the same material (played thirty-five times). Please listen from 2.00 to 4.00.

Video example 2. Bryn Harrison, Dead Time (2019), performed by Wet Ink Ensemble, recorded at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November 2019. Video playback starts at 2:00.

Example 2. Bryn Harrison, Dead Time, bars 49–52.

This abrupt change occurs again from bars 98 to 99. Here the live loop (performed nine times) is replaced by a much longer sampled loop (played fifty times). The continuation of the performed instrumental repetitions by digital means is intended to create both a continuity and a rift: the material itself remains largely “unchanged” through the process of sampling but the way in which the loop is produced shifts to a virtual rendition of itself, complete with glitches and irregularities. I am interested in the ways that these two junctures (bars 51–52 and 98–99) mark significant changes in our musical perception as we encounter a shift from the actual to the virtual. Does hearing these isolated digital loops prompt a sense of recreating the past or does it create a renewed sense of being present? I am similarly interested in how a sense of temporal flow and of becoming is affected once the digital loop takes over. Do the digital loops convey a sense of time passing or a lack of dynamism and movement? How much human agency is present once we are left only with the audible traces of the bodies that produced those sounds, once the conscious attempt to perform those same actions again and again is removed? How is our sense of the present and the past affected by the fact that while the digital loop continues to repeat, the musicians are still seen on stage listening to themselves listening?

The last three bars of Dead Time involve a dramatic expansion of the repetitive processes outlined above. Alice Teyssier, in an online article aptly titled “Echoes of Echoes,” writes that “The last few minutes of the piece involve extreme quantities of repetitions of small sonic envelopes, oscillating between the fragility of humans attempting mechanical repetition, followed by a repeated digital snapshot of the same loop.” ⁴

The passage she describes can be heard in the final ten minutes of the piece. Please listen from 11.30 to the end.

Video example 3. Bryn Harrison, Dead Time (2019), performed by Wet Ink Ensemble, recorded at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, November 2019. Video playback starts at 11:30.

Example 3. Bryn Harrison, Dead Time, bars 145–48.

As is evident from the above clip, the first of these bars features an extended digital loop of the previously performed material. This is played eighty-four times before the instrumentalists superimpose live material over the loop. The live material combines individual sounds (one per player) lasting approximately one second and intentionally features materials quite unlike those previously used in the piece. These consist of a saxophone multiphonic, a violin harmonic, a muted piano note, and a strike on the bell of a cymbal. The instructions in the score specify that these sounds should be repeated in as exact a way as possible. The relatively unstable nature of these sounds and the difficulty in placing these sounds at precisely the same point in relation to what the other musicians are playing makes the task impossible, resulting in miniscule but often perceptible changes with each iteration. Slight differences may be identified in terms of either the execution of the sounds themselves or their location within the bar.

After eighty-four repetitions the digital loop stops abruptly, leaving the performed repetitions to continue, alone, a further eighty-four times. The sudden absence of the digital loop is designed to bring attention and heightened focus to the live instrumental parts. As is evident in the above example, although the live parts remain unchanged, the context in which they appear is dramatically altered. I invite readers and listeners to comment on their experience of listening to these last few minutes of the work. ⁵ In what ways does the context of the live parts change once the electronic loop disappears? Do these repetitions feel additive or accumulative? When one listens to the same event repeated over such long periods, how do the sounds change in the mind that perceives them? Do these events promote, in the Deleuzian sense, the idea of repetition as something in a constant state of renewal, or do you, as a listener, experience the slow circularity of time that Baraitser speaks of?

Conclusion

I have become fascinated by the relationship between the sounds generated live and those recorded digitally and, in particular, the ways in which these might be used simultaneously or contrasted within the same piece of music. What interests me is the interplay between the “organic” and the “mechanical” and the effects that this might have on our temporal perception when each is subjected to particularly high degrees of repetition. Music holds a fascinating position in its ability to convey a unique sense of temporal awareness and I would argue that the different ways of experiencing time that have been outlined here—those of becoming or unbecoming—might not be so diametrically opposed. For me, the feeling of repetition as an active force that Deleuze argues for might, at any moment, give way to the pooling of time that Baraitser describes. As illustrated by the recent pandemic, our view of time is not dependent on one singular perspective but might alter from one moment to the next, according to changing contexts and our place in the world. Each experience of time passing is dependent on our previous experiences. I feel that this multi-perspectival view of temporality is what gives music its unique qualities. For me, working in this way has provided fertile ground for creative exploration, leading me to consider different ways of utilising materials, novel approaches to musical form, and different ways of thinking about musical duration. This chapter has used examples from just one piece of music from my own output to illustrate these considerations, but a multi-dimensional approach to musical temporality might, of course, apply to many different works within a purely acoustic or digital domain, as well as to a variety of musical approaches and disciplines (improvised music, for instance). I look forward to receiving comments from listeners on their responses to this piece as well as opening up the discussion around multiple perspectives of musical temporality more broadly.